


so delicately wrought

by kaberett



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F, Field Trips with Zuko, Gen, Toph is a terrible parent, the Grumpiest Pregnant Ladies Club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 09:06:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5961793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaberett/pseuds/kaberett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mai has always been Lin's favourite aunt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LizBee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizBee/gifts).



> ... this ended up much bleaker than I expected or intended; apologies! Toph _is_ a terrible parent (she means well! she's just... kind of crap at it) and it _does_ mess Lin up but, well. There is a peaceful ending, at least.

"You know, being able to bend the armour to fit doesn't mean it's actually a good idea to keep working."

"You know, I think that's the most words I've ever heard you say in one go," Toph snaps back. Very quietly.

Mai doesn't do anything so ostentatious as smirk, or even raise her eyebrows, because of _course_ she doesn't, not in public and certainly not while arriving on the first Fire Nation state visit to Republic City since the signing of the treaties that created it -- but nonetheless she somehow manages to make it perfectly clear that she is laughing at you, in her own laconic fashion but not unkindly, and Toph _has_ adjusted her armour but she's still hot and uncomfortable and her ankles hurt and she does not, at this precise moment, have any idea at _all_ why she thought this was a good idea.

(Running security for the Heads of State of the Fire Nation is not even slightly the problem, firstly because she is absolutely confident that the people she's protecting are _not_ Zuko and Mai, who are entirely capable of defending themselves adequately _as_ has been amply demonstrated _even if_ \-- okay, actually, that's a bit surprising -- even _if_ Mai is also about three months pregnant. The _problem_ is very much that she is hot and uncomfortable and assured with perfect complacency by an utterly serene Katara _who_ was somehow managing this _despite breastfeeding at the time_ never _mind_ the two toddlers that everything is entirely healthy and normal and so she's _stuck like this_ for at _least_ another six weeks. She cannot, even slightly, remember why she thought this was a good idea.)

The saving grace is that, the moment they're past the reporters and into the thing Toph still thinks of as a palace even if technically she shouldn't, Mai leans a little closer and says, "Katara mentioned that you can do hot mud baths. They sound awful. _Please_ can we fit one into the schedule."

The baby responds to her startled laughter by kicking.


	2. Chapter 2

Privately, Mai has always been Lin's favourite aunt. Aunt Katara lets cousin Bumi run wild, and Aunt Suki _encourages_ Uncle Sokka. Of course she doesn't actually see Aunt Mai and Uncle Zuko as often because they don't live in Republic City; she's a little uncomfortable with the idea of a hereditary ruler, but she manages to soothe her conscience a little by insisting that if the Fire Nation didn't _want_ Uncle Zuko as their leader it would have been easy enough to get rid of him. In any case, the thing she likes about them is that they're both reserved and focussed: they always seem still and somehow sharp, and while it's a bit unsettling to be the centre of their attention it's also kind of soothing, like they can see all of you so there's no point hiding, and like they think you're important.

Secretly, she sometimes wishes Izumi was her little sister instead.

The autumn after she turns fourteen is especially bad. She's growing again and Mama is busier and crosser even than usual, barely there except to snarl at her for not keeping Suyin better behaved or to drill their exercises. Metal-bending's been difficult before, sometimes, but it's never been this _frustrating_ : Mama's barely-concealed impatience does absolutely nothing to help, and it's all she can do not to burst into furious tears about how her arms and legs are all the wrong shape and always in the wrong places and nothing _works_.

So she can't help stiffening up when she turns around in the arena, early one morning, to see her mother leaning back against the wall, left arm across her body, right elbow resting on left fist, right index finger tapping her cheek -- and, "Sloppy," Mamma says, abstractedly, "You should have felt me come in," and it's not really even a mild rebuke it's just an observation but -- well. But Mama's distracted observations have a habit of tangling round her wrists and throat and tightening like iron too pure to bend, smelted at the new refineries by the lightning-benders, and the worst bit of all is that she really _does_ think they're just observations, really _doesn't_ seem to mean to hurt.

"Anyway," Mama says briskly, pushing herself back off the wall, dragging one toe absent-mindedly back and forth across the floor -- Lin can't help staring blankly at it, eyes tracking the motion even as she feels too frozen to reach for the sonar, "Your aunt Katara said you might like to spend the winter with Zuko. Change of scene. Aang's flying over for some negotiations, sets off in three days."

And just like that she's gone, in a swirl of motes of rust and a sense of distance, and Lin's left feeling like a disappointment, like she's been dismissed, all over again.

***

She does go.

She's so wrapped up in misery and thinking through packing and, eventually, blankets (Uncle Aang never seems to feel the cold, even when she's huddled up against the edge of Appa's saddle to keep out of the wind as much as possible) that it doesn't really occur to her until they're landing that Uncle Aang is the Avatar, who is visiting the Fire Nation to discuss politics, and that makes it a state occasion.

She gets through the crowd with her chin up and her mind as blank as her face, noticing in a vague sort of fashion that Uncle Aang keeps shooting her apologetic, almost anxious glances, as though he'd forgotten that she might not have been expecting it. She bows to her uncle and aunt and her cousin, all three of whom bow in return, and then somehow in a sweep of silk and staff she ends up deposited in a suite of rooms that just serves to underscore how very alone she feels.

At least she is slightly better emotionally prepared for dinner: she dresses in the unfamiliar robes left out for her; when she can't avoid conversation she murmurs polite assent; and eventually, at last, she falls asleep with the screens pushed to one side to let the warm night air in.

***

Habit and restlessness from the journey still have Lin up before dawn, and diffident enquiries of the staff moving through the early-morning halls yield directions to a training ground.

This time she does notice when a woman approaches, pauses for a suspended moment, and then moves slowly to lean against the railing. Lin consciously ungrits her teeth, recentres her stance, and somehow _still_ manages to trip over her own feet when she turns around.

She can feel her face heating, and she hates that, too.

"You know," her Aunt Mai says slowly, and drily, and with absolutely no inflection, staring at nothing in particular, "I hated being fourteen. It had no redeeming features whatsoever. I couldn't keep track of where my hands were, my accuracy went to _shit_ , and nobody gave me any help fixing it because my parents were horrified that I was using weapons at all and Azula's masters were completely focussed on her. It lasted," and here she makes glancing eye contact, as light as her voice, "six months, before _she_ ran into it face first, and suddenly it was a problem with a solution."

Lin does not manage to catch the urge to scuff her foot across the floor until she's halfway through the motion. She hates this, too, feeling like a recalcitrant ostrich horse, and she knows she's staring sullenly at the ground but it does not, actually, feel very much as though there is anything else she is _capable_ of, right now, but Aunt Mai is walking toward her and she is stuck, held miserably in place by the weight like bars of lead in the pit of her stomach.

"Ask Aang to teach you to meditate, if he hasn't already," Mai says, having crossed over during the pause, "because as it turns out he does have _some_ uses. For the rest, I can show you some exercises. Or Izumi can; she's been working with them. And," this last slightly brisker, "if you're interested I'll tutor you with knives. _Without_ metal-bending."


	3. Chapter 3

Half a world away and all those decades later it's a small consolation that at least she still has this. It's the Sato girl who tells her that she was dumped at her mother's statue's feet, a message no-one dared collect til nightfall. There's a bitterness to that, to knowing that the night-vision goggles Hiroshi Sato manufactured made even the dark an illusory shield, but the girl's voice doesn't waver and nor does her attention, and Lin finds that she is just too tired to feel anything but empty. And so she drifts again, out of and without a focus, while the girl peels away her armour piece by piece, the saw's vibration noise over numbness without meaning, without shape, without sense.

It is a small consolation that the girl finally sits back, and reaches to one side, and -- hands stuttering briefly through stillnesses -- settles a bag on her lap. No: a roll of knives. "They're mine," Asami Sato says softly, "so I can give you my word they've been well looked after. And I think right now you need."

It is small consolation.

Her mother and aunts and uncles fought a war so that children would never have to fight wars again, Lin thinks, and is very nearly swallowed up by the depths of her failure and despair.

***

She returns the knives at the South Pole, and over the next year and a half Lin has relatively little to do with Asami. Occasionally budget approvals for purchases from Future Industries cross her desk; she signs them; shipments arrive. 

When Korra departs that changes. The Avatar rearranged Republic City's political landscape around herself and she leaves a crater. Lin has no patience with the metaphors that suggest themselves -- spheres of influence; gravity wells -- but she has to concede, if grudgingly, that Korra is the most grounded Waterbender she's ever met.

That Asami misses Korra is obvious. It is less clear to Lin why it is that this transmutes into closer collaboration between Future Industries and the police, from technology to training for the expanded corps of non-benders. She can't work out the shape of the structure, but she can't shake the feeling that its foundations were laid in a tunnel in the dark: where metal screamed against metal and sparks illuminated the gloom, echoing forward through a strangely quiet city while the world beyond its borders rumbles on.

\-- and then intrudes. Dramatically.

And somehow, miraculously, resolves, with the world knit closer together and stronger than it started.

Lin finds herself remembering that Katara's always said that the Avatar's return brought back hope. The mental swipe about sentimentality is reflexive; she thinks around it, thinks of two young women stepping out of the world, no longer children and no wars to fight. It _is_ sentimental, but nonetheless she feels as though for now she's settled into place, the sounds of her city humming through her once again, now and for ever.

(She takes care to keep Mako busy, over the next two weeks. It isn't that he's sulking, precisely, but he's definitely abashed; to her mild surprise, she finds that she's amused, amusement with no edge and no malice. She holds onto it. She's found some peace.)


End file.
